


Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go

by kla1991



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Character, Christina doesn't die I promise, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 15:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11210808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kla1991/pseuds/kla1991
Summary: "Myka had been lying to herself when she came here, when she believed that the thought of Helena didn’t hurt. It’s agony, how much she’s missed this, and she hasn’t even looked into Helena’s eyes. She wonders, again, why she ever left."





	Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nothingholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingholic/gifts).



> I got this prompt from nothingholic-s on tumblr: 'I hope that we meet in a coffee shop a few years later and start over again... I really miss you.' Took it into left field, but I hope it satisfies. 
> 
> Title is from a song of the same name, from the musical "Big River."
> 
> The Perk Downtown is a real place in Denver. I've never been, but I liked the look of the place based on photos they had on facebook. Stephen Darr is a real artist, and you can find some examples of his work series "On the Grid" online. 
> 
> Special thanks to vest-wearer, Sunshine18, and coalescia for beta work.

            Myka goes to the Perk Downtown, not because she doesn’t think of Helena, but because it doesn’t hurt to do so. Helena was years ago, and the Perk had been Myka’s coffee spot anyway—Helena had always been particular about her tea, and she’d gotten a thermos that French pressed coffee from an NPR fundraiser, so she rarely bought it in shops. There’s no reason to expect that Helena might be there.

            The art on the walls is fascinating, carefully painted lines tangled together like metro maps, and the colors are bold and evocative without needing to be direct. Myka doesn’t really “get” art, so she’s happy with the simplicity.

            “Who’s the artist?” she asks the barista while she pays.

            “Stephen Darr,” the girl tells her. “There’s more upstairs, you should take a look.”

            And Myka ordered her coffee to go, but she’s on vacation, which means she has plenty of time to wander around and stare at some paintings. Up the stairs she goes, enjoying the familiar creak of the wooden steps, the worn sleekness of the banister. _Pete was right,_ she thinks. _It’s good to be home for a little while._

            She tries not to worry that even after four years, D.C. doesn’t feel like home.

            A strip of gold on one of the paintings gleams in the sunlight when Myka reaches the top of the stairs, and it leads her eye directly to the first little table by the window. Directly to where Helena is sitting.

            It’s Christina that Myka sees first, really, because of the motion of her flapping hands. She’s explaining something, eagerly and in detail, and Helena is soaking it up like sunlight, her face as happy as the first day of spring. Christina always has that effect on her.

            It hits Myka like a hammer, well before the happy pair notices her presence, before Helena turns to look at her. It hurts. She’d been lying to herself when she came here, when she believed that the thought of Helena didn’t hurt. It’s agony, how much she’s missed this, and she hasn’t even looked into Helena’s eyes.

            She wonders, again, why she ever left.

 

            They met at a bereavement group, which would become one of Myka’s frequently cited reasons for letting the relationship go so willingly. Myka’s father had just died, and she’d snapped at one too many people, so Tracy had told her to get help. Contrary to what everyone who knew her expected, Myka had eschewed private therapy in favor of groups—in groups, everyone has to admit something, and that seemed more fair to Myka than dumping it on a person you’ll never know anything about. Plus, the burden wasn’t going to be all on her to speak. With any luck, someone else would start sobbing, and she wouldn’t have to say anything at all.

            Meetings were held in a little yellow house in town, discreet but not hidden. The first thing Myka noticed, besides that the door stuck a little, was the noise. Kids were running everywhere, chasing each other, punching a heavy bag in the room across the hall, playing foosball, and squabbling over the last slice of pizza. Adults with official nametags were shepherding them away from trouble, but no one was trying to control the din. Myka waded through the chaos to the back of the house, where she smelled coffee.

            “It’ll quiet down in about ten minutes, I promise,” a Chinese woman in a purple cardigan told Myka when a sudden bang made her flinch. “Deb and the kids’ crew try to let them get it all out before group starts.”

            “That’s nice to know…” Myka glanced down at the woman’s nametag and back up, “Abigail. You’re the facilitator for the adults?”

            “I am. And you’re Myka, right? I think we spoke on the phone.”

            A few minutes later, Myka had been handed off from Abigail to a long-time volunteer, who insisted she stick a nametag to her chest before she took a seat and tried to wait out the pre-meeting chaos.

            There was one kid, with pale skin, dark hair, and light-up tennis shoes, huddled into the corner of one of the couches and obviously not enjoying herself. Her mother (it had to be her mother, with that beautiful dark hair) was sitting next to her, and it looked like they were texting each other. Myka wondered, briefly, if one of them was hard of hearing or something, before another person started talking to her. By the time the meeting started, the little girl had slipped out.

            Spouses were the most common loss that people had suffered in this group, though there was one guy whose twin sister had died, and one couple had lost a college-aged son. Only one other person was there because of a parent.

            And then there was the dark-haired woman who had been texting her daughter. She fiddled with a ring before explaining that, while her daughter had lost her father, she herself had lost little more than a co-parent.

            “Mostly I’m hoping to learn what I can do to help my daughter, Christina. This is dreadful for her, and I’m at a loss.”

            “Helping our children grieve is a pretty common topic here, Helena,” Abigail assured the woman.

            Myka tried to pay attention, but Helena was distracting. She was British, first of all, which stuck out in Denver, Colorado. Her shirt and slacks looked expensive, but her shoes had been re-soled instead of replaced. She had a notepad in her lap, like she was at a college lecture rather than group therapy, but the way her pen moved looked more like doodling than words. Also, the sweater vest-wearing man sitting next to her was going to snap her pen in half if she didn’t stop clicking it, and that seemed to be amusing her. But every time there was sound in another part of the house, her amusement faded and she listened, rigid and reaching for her cell phone, until whatever crisis she was expecting failed to occur.

            They almost ran into each other trying to leave the room when the meeting ended. Helena extended her arm with a flourish to let Myka pass, but she didn’t say a word except, “Sorry.”

            “How was it?” Tracy asked the next morning, over coffee.

            “It was… interesting,” Myka allowed.

            Tracy sighed. “That’s good enough, I guess.”

 

            On week two, Myka saw Helena’s eyes flashing cold while she discussed something with another parent and Deb, the children’s group facilitator, in the little house’s corner office. The other parent backed away from her, nodded at whatever was being said, and bolted out of the office door. Deb shook Helena’s hand and left the room beaming.

            At the start of meeting on the third week, after Helena had coaxed Christina to go with Deb to the children’s group, she sat down next to Myka. Her notepad was angled so that her doodles were clearly visible: a rat, a shark, and some kind of M. C. Escher-like machine. She still tensed when there was a noise from elsewhere in the house, but she relaxed sooner.

            _I like Deb,_ she scribbled on her notepad when she caught Myka watching her. It didn’t make sense at the time.

            After the meeting, though, Myka lingered, and she overheard Deb saying to another child, “Ben, remember how we talked about this before the meeting? Christina hisses at you because she doesn’t want to be touched. You have to ask her first, and listen if she says no.”

            Helena caught Myka’s eye and winked.

 

            “You don’t talk much,” Abigail said before the forth week’s meeting started. She’d pulled Myka aside, talked to her in the same little office where Deb and Helena had talked to Ben’s father two weeks before.

            “Don’t have much to say.”

            “Really?”

            Myka stared Abigail down and saw nothing but earnest curiosity. She shrugged.

            “I mean… my experiences are different from everyone else’s. I can sympathize, but I don’t have anything useful to add, and I don’t think saying anything would be helpful to me, either.”

            “That’s okay, different things work for different people,” Abigail reassured her. Then, “Can I ask you a question?”

            “Shoot.”

            “If this isn’t working for you, why have you kept coming?”

            No good answer came to mind, but Abigail seemed patient enough to wait while Myka thought about it. As the silence stretched out between them, Myka felt a prickling of eyes on her and looked up, through the glass office door. Helena waved as she moved past, for all the world like she hadn’t been staring. Christina lingered a moment, picking at a band-aid around her thumb and regarding Myka with eyes as dark and probing as her mother’s.

            Abigail suggested that they go into the meeting room, and thanked Myka for being straight with her. Myka had a feeling that at least two people had just seen right through her.

            She took the chair next to Helena, and something tumultuous was shunted aside to make room for Helena’s smile. It made Myka’s chest swell with pride, to be on the receiving end of that smile. Maybe that’s why she finally opened her mouth.

            The man whose sister had died, Dylan, was explaining, “I feel horrible, because it’s honestly a relief to not hear her nag me anymore. I loved her, but…”

            “Yeah, I get that,” Myka said. “My dad never had anything good to say about my job, and I could always have gone without that.”

            “Don’t you work for the Secret Service?” Helena queried before Abigail had a chance to ask whatever question she’d had planned for Myka. “Why would he disapprove?”

            “Why do you know that?”

            “I saw you around once, when I had a tour. I created the newest anti-counterfeit measures.”

            “ _You_ did that? That stuff is amazing! And you know, I haven’t found anyone yet who can really explain it to me.”

            Helena leaned in like she was telling a secret. “Lucky you then, to have access to the source.”

            The rest of the room intruded on Helena and Myka’s little moment when Abigail cleared her throat.

            “Anyway, yeah,” Myka continued, leaning sharply away from Helena, “I think it’s normal. I mean, people aren’t perfect just because they died. That’s, uh, that’s all I was trying to say.”

            Helena smirked at her, and they both sat for the rest of the meeting in silence.

            When the meeting ended and the door opened, Christina was already waiting on the threshold.

            “Mummy,” she called across the room, “We should bring Ms. Myka to dinner with us.”

            Dylan choked back laughter. Abigail pulled him aside to chat. Or gossip. Myka had a funny feeling that they were talking about her.

            Helena, for her part, looked… intrigued, like she was trying to stare her daughter down and sift out what had brought on this suggestion.

            “I think I agree,” she finally said, and the look she and Christina shared was conspiratorial, like the look she’d exchanged with Myka earlier. She looped her arm through Myka’s and said, “Would you care to grace us with your company, Ms. Myka?”

            “But of course,” Myka agreed, because she didn’t want to seem as thrown off as she was. If Helena was flirting with her, she’d give as good as she got, and if Christina was up to something, Myka was willing to play along until she found out what it was. “Where to?”

            Helena rolled her eyes. “IHOP. It was the first place we spotted last month, and we were starved enough to go. Now it’s tradition.”

            Christina hooked one finger onto Helena’s other hand as they made their way to the door. “Mummy’s just happy to find food I’m willing to eat,” she said. “She’s always worried that I might wind up malnourished, although she’s obviously just being dramatic.”

            “Dramatic! Me? How could you, my own flesh and blood, make such an accusation?”

            Christina rolled her eyes.

 

            Myka ordered plain scrambled eggs for dinner, explaining that she didn’t eat sugar. She did join in on the game of sneaking a bite of Christina’s ultra-syrupy waffle, though, when Helena started teasing the kid. It was the only pause in Christina’s explanation of the biology of axolotls.

            “How do you know about these things, even?” Myka asked. “I didn’t hear of them until college.”

            “Mummy told me about them,” Christina said. “They were mentioned in an article she was reading about stem cells, and she said she wished she knew more, so I found out! They’re really neat.”

            Myka nodded. “They really are.”

            Christina swallowed her last bite of waffle and curled up into her mother’s side to doze.

            “That was awesome,” Myka said.

            “Isn’t it? I don’t know how she keeps it all in her head,” Helena agreed.

            “What are you going to do when she finishes her design of the perfect axolotl habitat?”

            Helena shrugged with the shoulder Christina wasn’t leaning against. “Build it, of course. Speaking of which, we’ve run out of time for me to get into the details of my little anti-counterfeit invention.”

            But when Helena roused Christina to take her home, the little girl asked if Myka would be coming as well. “Mummy likes company after I’ve gone to bed,” she explained.

            Myka wondered if that was a euphemism for something, but Helena didn’t blush or correct the girl, just bundled her up in her arms and carried her to the car.

            “You are welcome, if you don’t mind waiting while I settle her in,” Helena said as she buckled Christina’s seat belt, and Myka saw that flash of turmoil in Helena’s eyes when she kissed her daughter’s forehead.

            “Sure,” Myka said, shifting her weight and watching Helena carefully. “Why not?”

            There was, obviously, a list of reasons why not, and Myka reviewed them as she followed Helena down the winding neighborhood streets toward her home. They hardly knew each other, who knew how long it might take to get an eight-year-old to go to sleep, and surely Myka had intruded enough already without inserting herself into their nightly routine. But she wanted to intrude a little more, just enough to find out what was lurking behind Helena’s eyes, and Helena seemed like maybe she wanted that, too.

            Helena told Myka to make herself at home, which meant she stood in front of the enormous bookshelves, scanning every title and pulling some at random to read a few lines, until Helena came back downstairs nearly half an hour later.

            “Coffee, tea, or alcohol?” Helena asked, and Myka decided she might as well drink tea in a British household. Helena’s next question was, “How do you like the library?”

            “It’s impressive,” Myka said, sitting in the kitchen chair Helena motioned to, “My, uh, my dad would have approved of all the Golden Age sci-fi.”

            “Do you?”

            “I tend to like the older stuff. And the newer. Both of them have that feeling of discovery to them that I just can’t quite reach with—“

            “Sexist old white men from the 50’s?”

            The two of them shared a chuckle, and then Helena turned to the teakettle, snatching it up just before it whistled, before continuing. “I don’t blame you. My fondness for the old guard is sentimental, not objective. My father introduced me to it, like yours, but I think I might have Christina skip it, at least at first.”

            “What’s Christina reading now?”

            “Harry Potter, of course. We’re on the third one.”

            Myka paused while Helena presented her tea, breathed in the steam and let the other woman settle in the chair across from her.

            “Can I ask what happened to her thumbs?” she said. “I noticed the band-aids.”

            “She picks at them, bad habit. Can I ask you something?”

            It was clearly an avoidance maneuver, but Myka allowed it. She didn’t want to push.

            “Your father had quite strong opinions of things, didn’t he?”

            Myka answered slowly, “Yes.”

            Helena nodded. “Mine does as well. It’s part of why I left London, I simply never felt good enough for him, and I was tired of trying. _I_ thought I was good enough.”

            She took a sip from her tea, set it aside and stared out into the darkness of the night. The darkness was building up behind her eyes, and Myka started glancing around for tissues, in case Helena started to cry. But she just cleared her throat and continued.

            “But now with Christina, I just… Her father was making progress with her about the picking, she hadn’t needed bandages in months, but I can’t dissuade her. And I don’t cook eggs right, or do the funny voices when I read to her, or… or be good enough. She’s everything to me, and I’m just… not good enough.”

            “Hey,” Myka said, and the earnest look in Helena’s eyes almost made her back away. Instead, she reached out and held her hand. “My dad was wrong about me, and yours is wrong about you. It’s rough right now, but it’ll be okay.”

            She didn’t usually comfort people like this—she never knew what to say, and anything she came out with was stilted and awkward, insincere. But then, she didn’t usually do well with kids either, or have nightcaps in the houses of people she barely knew. Clearly it was not a usual night. Or a usual person.

            When she left, Helena leaned against the doorframe, leaned in close to Myka, and asked if she would like to have an actual decent dinner next week, instead of sitting in the therapy meeting. Myka stubbornly refused to lean away, despite the way Helena threw her off balance, and agreed.

            They didn’t last a week before seeing each other again. They met for coffee at the Perk two days later.

 

            On her father’s birthday, Myka’s family threw a party in the old bookstore, which was nearly empty. Half the shelves on the wall were still stuffed, but there had been a week-long push to clear and remove the shelves on the floor to make space for guests—it was nice to have a positive reason to do the work, instead of just the painful fact that this last vestige of Warren Bering was being erased.

            Myka invited Helena, supposedly because the rest of the family wanted to meet her, and actually because Helena felt essential to that scene. The family minus one, the old friends who were so aware now that they were getting older, all crushed into the vacant store, could only be bearable with this new light added in. Helena didn’t make Myka admit that, but she held Myka’s hand so gently that she must have understood.

            So Myka found herself passing Helena from handshake to handshake, reciting names and watching everyone fall for Helena’s charm. Her mother, Jeannie, was discussing the architecture of her new apartment, which couldn’t possibly have been as interesting as Helena was making it seem, when an egg timer in Jeannie’s pocket went off.

            “Ah, that second round of brie is ready. Excuse me, I’ll just—“

            “Oh, Myka and I can get it!” Helena offered, already taking Myka by the elbow. “You’ve been running up and down those stairs all evening, enjoy the company a while.”

            Jeannie agreed, of course, but it didn’t matter, because Myka had already been dragged halfway up the stairs by then.

            “Getting a bit loud, don’t you think?” Helena said, as if that were an explanation.

            Not that she was wrong. The quiet of the apartment was really a blessing, and Myka felt herself relax as the door shut and the party bustle became white noise below them. They pulled the brie out of the oven, and then Helena started wandering around. The apartment, like the bookstore, was being emptied out, but more slowly. The character of the place was still intact.

            “So this is your childhood home?”

            “Yep.”

            Helena’s gaze fell on the landmarks of stories Myka had told her—the cracks in the heavily repaired china sheep on the mantle, the not-quite-matched spot of paint that covered a hole Myka had made with her fencing saber, the heights and dates running up the kitchen doorframe. Even the deep gouge in the hardwood floor from a thrown drinking glass. She turned away from that sharply and asked where Myka’s bedroom had been.

            The bedroom had been her father’s study for years, so it was much more his space than hers, but Myka’s bed was still there, neatly made with her old flannel bed sheets. Helena sat on it and looked around. Myka rubbed the back of her neck and stayed on the threshold.

            “Thank you for having me here,” Helena said suddenly, softly. “I know your relationship with your family is… complicated at times, but it’s lovely to be so welcomed by one nevertheless.”

            Myka came in then, sat down next to Helena.

            “How are you feeling?” Helena asked.

            “I’m okay,” Myka said. “Like you said, it’s complicated, but it’s not so bad right now.”

            _With you here,_ she didn’t add.

            Helena smiled, and they stared at each other a minute. The air started to develop a faint charge, and if Myka had had time to wonder about it, she might have thought Helena had glanced down at her lips. But Tracy barged in just then.

            “Jeannie wants to know what happened to the brie,” she said.

            “Right, of course,” Helena said, and she was out the door with brie in hand as if it were the only thing on her mind.

            Tracy watched her go, then told Myka, “I like her.”

            “You told me that the first time you met her.”

            “Yeah, well…” Tracy shrugged, then eyed Myka for a moment. “ _You_ like her.”

            “Mind your business, Trace.”

            “It is my business, we’re sisters!”

            “We’re cousins,” Myka grumbled, but she knew it was pointless. She and Tracy had grown up side by side, had spent more time with each other than anyone; they’d even shared this tiny bedroom for a year and a half when Tracy’s father was stationed in Germany during their junior year of high school. And Tracy knew what Myka’s father had really been like, even if she’d rarely witnessed it. Cousins, sisters, it didn’t matter—they were a pair.

            “Where’s her daughter?” Tracy asked.

            “She’s spending the night with a friend she made at school.”

            “Awesome! Or not?” Tracy corrected when Myka’s smile was half-hearted.

            Myka sighed, flopped down onto her old bed, and told Tracy about Nate, Christina’s new friend’s father. Tracy told her she was being stupid, that just because there was a single guy hanging around didn’t mean Helena had eyes for anyone but her, and even if she did that just meant Myka needed to make a goddamn move already. But Myka still wasn’t sure.

            When they went back to the party, Helena bounded over to them, and Myka forgot about it.

 

            Myka was both baffled and excited when Helena called one day to insist that her presence at dinner was “imperative to the evening’s proceedings” and refused to say more. She arrived at the Wells’ house at 7 precisely and saw Helena laughing at something Nate was saying. Their knees were crammed together and touching under a child-sized picnic table, positioned strategically to face Adelaide and Christina, who were sparring on the grass. Myka parked and got out, trying to contain the flare of jealousy and self-consciousness that made her want to flee the scene. When Nate saw her, he almost threw the little table over in his rush to greet her politely. Helena made a show for Myka of rolling her eyes.

            “Thank you for taking Christina to her kenpo lessons, Nate,” Helena said, steering him subtly away from Myka and towards his car.

            “You mean karate?” Nate said, gesturing to Adelaide that they were leaving.

            “I’ve told you this! Kenpo is related to karate, but it’s a distinctive form of Okinawan martial arts that—“

            “Okay, okay! Kenpo it is,” Nate said. He put a hand on Helena’s shoulder while she scowled at him, then buckled Adelaide into her seat and drove away.

            “That man,” Helena scoffed as she pretended to wave pleasantly. “He always thinks it’s an argument, and he refuses to actually learn anything.”

            “I thought you liked him?”

            “I do, I suppose, but he’s still annoying.”

            Myka bit her lip to keep the triumphant grin off her face. “So what are these proceedings I’m so imperative to?” she asked.

            Helena shushed her. Christina, as she pointed out, was coming towards them. No information was forthcoming until after dinner was done and Christina was sound asleep. Helena stopped mid-conversation to listen for any noise from Christina’s room, then suddenly hurried Myka back outside.

            “I want to have the axolotls set up before morning,” Helena said, hauling boxes out of the trunk of her car, “and I realized I couldn’t get it done and still sleep tonight.”

            “You can make the most advanced anti-counterfeiting measures known to man, but you can’t make a fish tank?” Myka teased.

            Helena shoved a particularly heavy box into her arms, saying, “I’m an engineer, darling, not an octopus. I need your hands for the fiddly bits.”

            They almost broke the glass tank once, and several times they ended up clinging to each other and shaking with desperately contained laughter, but the two axolotls were swimming happily in their home by three in the morning. Christina’s habitat design was truly glorious. Myka slept on the couch, and got to wake up to Christina’s bouncing and flapping when she came downstairs in the morning. She buried herself in her mother’s arms, of course, grateful and loving as could be. But then, she pressed herself into Myka’s side as an invitation for affection as well.

            Myka understood that Christina was a kid who generally didn’t like to be touched, and even when she did, she didn’t reciprocate much. Letting someone put their arms around her was a rarity, reserved only for her favorite people. Up til that morning, the list had included only four: her parents, her uncle Charles, and Adelaide. Now, suddenly, Myka was being included, too.

            She hugged Christina with all her might for as long as she was allowed. When she looked over at Helena, she was staggered by the emotion she found there. For a minute, they held each other’s eyes, and Myka wondered if she should say something, and what on earth that something might be.

            Then Helena clapped her hands together and asked Christina, “Now my dear, what are you going to name these things?”

            The moment lingered between Helena and Myka, but neither of them said anything about it.

           

            It went on like that for months, seeing each other almost every day, catching each other staring, and never discussing it. They discussed almost everything else, though, until Myka felt like Helena knew her better than anyone, even Tracy. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected Helena felt the same. It seemed like they were going to be stuck there, in that intimate liminal space, forever.

            And then, of course, all hell broke loose.

            The whole time it was happening, Myka kept flashing back to the first conversation she and Helena had had about her job.

            _“You must like paperwork,” Helena had said._

_“I do! The job’s about organization and strategy more than anything, which is not most people’s guess. But most adrenaline junkies don’t make it through training—they want to shoot guns and wrestle criminals, not think things through.”_

_Helena had nodded, reflecting, “So it’s quite a bit more like office work, with occasional spikes of excitement thrown in for flavor?”_

_“_ Very _occasional spikes.”_

            The Denver office been trying to track down a man named Leo, who’d gotten a bit too interested in Helena’s technology, attempting multiple times to imitate its effects. Current intel suggested that his latest plan was to break into the company that manufactured key parts of the machine, and Myka and two other young agents had been sent to bust him.

            “If we stick this close to each other,” Agent Battin had complained when Myka explained the plan, “he could slip past us! Especially if he sees Wilson, which he will if he takes this route through the building.”

            Wilson agreed, but Myka was adamant. “We stick that close because Leo is dangerous. He’s shot a law enforcement officer before, remember? Either we back each other up and make it not worth it for him to fire, even with the risk of him getting by us, or we get separated and he gets by us because one of us got shot. Which do you prefer?”

            Battin and Wilson grumbled, but Myka had the final say. They arranged themselves the way she had told them to.

            Leo was almost in position—one of the riskier positions, but still—when Myka heard Battin muttering to himself on the comms.

            “I can get him,” he said. “If I go now, I can get him.”

            “We’ll get him together. Hold your position,” Myka warned.

            “I can get him. I can.”

            Days of planning fell apart in seconds when Battin broke cover. Myka followed, watching Leo in slow motion drawing his weapon and aiming at the spot that Battin had been in, before had Myka body-slammed him to the ground. And as she and Battin were falling, Myka fired at Leo. Her hope was that Wilson could come up behind him before he re-aimed at her on the ground.

            She hit him square in the shoulder of his shooting arm. He dropped his gun, and Wilson kicked it away before he pulled out his cuffs. She didn’t see it though, because Battin’s elbow connected with her mouth in the same instant.

            Myka left the scene spitting blood and spitting mad.

            “What the hell was he thinking? Someone could have been killed!” she shouted, pacing the floor of the Agent in Charge’s office.

            “He screwed up, you’re right. But it could have been worse than it was,” the Agent in Charge said.

            “So what, because we got the guy it’s okay that an agent completely ignored my orders?”

            “Of course not, but you’re taking it too personally. It’s not about you.”

            But Myka wasn’t satisfied with that. Obviously it was about her—a male agent would never have been disobeyed like that, and she deserved the same respect. Didn’t she? The knot of uncertainty made her shoulders tight. Battin was obviously a sexist jerk, but was that the only factor in his decision? The only reason he wasn’t willing to trust her?

How had a situation that was under her command gone sideways so easily?

            Her mother called, as she often did, and Myka couldn’t explain why she was angry, but her mother tried to sooth her anyway.

            “Let it go,” Jeannie said. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

            Myka hung up on her and turned off her phone, then sat at her desk pounding out paperwork until past midnight.

            When she finally pulled into her driveway, Helena was there. She’d told Myka that she had to attend a dinner with colleagues to beguile a potential investor, that she’d likely go home as soon as she could and go to bed because such affairs were often stiff and dull—two things Helena could not abide. But here she was, at gone one in the morning, still in her dinner clothes. Myka thought, in the split second between when she saw Helena and when Helena saw her, what a shame it was that Helena’s tan wool trench coat covered most of the blue satin dress, and how truly elegant the curve of her legs were in those shoes.

            And then Helena was shouting at her.

            “Where in god’s name have you been?” she demanded. “Do you know how many times I’ve called you? It was all over the news that a Secret Service agent had been injured, and your phone was off, and the hospital wouldn’t tell me anything, and your office was closed, and I had no other recourse than to fucking stand around on your porch for hours! _Hours,_ My-ka.”

            Her voice broke on the name, and she flung her arms around Myka’s neck. Myka hugged her back, automatically first, then firmly, rocking her slightly and shushing her until Helena’s breath had steadied and she pulled back.

            “A rookie fell and sprained his wrist, it’s fine. I’m fine, okay?”

            Helena ran her thumb just under Myka’s split lip, but she seemed to know that pushing the issue would avail her nothing. She allowed herself to be shepherded inside, and though she was still petulant when she kicked off her shoes, she’d recovered herself by the time she hung her coat in the closet.

            The dress was truly stunning. Myka was almost sad when Helena asked for something more comfortable to borrow, but she handed over some clothes and cold cream readily before she started up a shower for herself.

            She came back to the kitchen refreshed and somewhat recovered from the emotions of the day, and found Helena using the slightly too-long sleeve of Myka’s borrowed flannel as an oven mitt to pick up a saucepan.

            “How long have we known each other, and yet you still haven’t obtained a proper tea kettle?”

            “There’s an electric water heater in the cabinet by the stove, and that shirt is cross-buttoned.”

            Helena glanced at the uneven buttons of the shirt and rolled her eyes before going back to her tea-making. Myka watched her and let the swell of adoration, usually kept in check, fill the space behind her ribs. She was too tired to deny it.

            “Where’s Christina?” she asked.

            “Nate agreed to let her stay the night.”

            Myka deflated a little. “That’s nice of him.”

            “He’s a nice man,” Helena agreed. “A shame he doesn’t know anything about particle physics.”

            “I don’t know much about that, either,” Myka said, wondering if this was a weird joke or if she should be reading up or something.

            The mischievous gleam in Helena’s eyes when she looked up filled Myka’s heart with a different kind of affection.

            “You have other redeeming qualities,” Helena murmured.

            They settled on the couch with their mugs, and Helena turned on the television without asking, switching to a channel that was playing a marathon of “How It’s Made.”

            “We watch this at home when one of us has trouble sleeping,” Helena said, a treasured glimpse into the private world of her and her daughter. Then she asked, “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

            “I can’t.”

            Helena pouted. “Who am I going to tell?”

            So Myka told her. And Helena didn’t tell her not to worry, or that it wasn’t her fault, or that everything worked out fine in the end. She said, “That must have been terrifying, to lose control of a situation like that.”

            All the air rushed out of Myka’s lungs.

            “I… I hadn’t thought about being scared.”

            Hadn’t let herself think about being scared, more like. She’d tried to focus on anger—anger was power. But she had been scared, and with Helena looking at her so kindly, it was harder to think of that as a bad thing.

            “I’d imagine you were rather preoccupied with getting your control back,” Helena said, “and keeping it.”

            “I never should have lost control at all,” Myka grumbled.

            Helena waved a dismissive hand in the air, almost sloshing her tea on Myka’s couch. “It’s difficult to control idiots. You never should have been out in the field with someone who refused to respect you.” Helena paused, then added, “Please tell me he’s going to get fired.”

            “He’s the one who broke his arm.”

            “A good start.”

            Myka laughed humorlessly, and turned Helena’s idea over and over in her mind: that Battin was the one who wasn’t good enough, not her. That she had done nothing wrong. It felt true in a way that was more stable than her earlier indignance had been.

            Helena pulled the blanket off the back of the couch then, threw it over the both of them, and nestled into Myka’s side. It was meant to comfort her, Myka knew, but Helena seemed so vulnerable and small this way that Myka felt a flood of protectiveness for her. And Helena trusted her with that. She pulled Helena closer and settled into the embrace. Everything had worked out fine in the end, after all, Myka thought before she fell asleep.

 

            “Agent Bering, can I speak to you for a moment?” her boss asked a few weeks later, and Myka’s spine went rigid. Maybe everything wasn’t really fine.

            When she entered the office, her boss was speaking to a grey-haired white man with a drab tie and a stern expression. He stood when Myka entered, and his face opened into a kind of eagerness that didn’t usually precede punishment—he looked quite happy to see her, actually.

            Her boss explained, “Agent Bering, this is Daniel Dickinson, the Assistant Director of Protective Operations. He wanted to speak with you.”

            Dickinson reached out to shake her hand, and Myka made sure her grip was firm and steady, despite her confusion.

            “How can I help you, sir?”

            “You can help me by transferring to DC. I’d like you to start your protective assignment.”

            Myka laughed, explaining, “I’m afraid I won’t be due for an assignment like that for at least another two years, sir.”

            Dickinson smiled at her, and Myka was embarrassed to catch herself thinking that it was the exact expression she’d always wanted to see on her father’s face. “I read all the reports of the incident last month, watched the video, looked over the case. Your performance was exceptional, Agent Bering. I want you on my team in DC, and I want you now.”

            Her silence was painful, but she didn’t know what to say.

            “It’s a lot to pile on you, I know, and you have plenty of time to answer. I just thought, since I was in the area, I’d like to deliver the offer in person. Either way you go, it’s good to meet you, Agent Bering.”

            Dickinson shook her hand again, and she managed to thank him in a steady voice before she was dismissed.

            Once the reality of what happened settled in, it was quite the ego boost, and that feeling only grew when she talked it through over dinner with her mother and Tracy.

            “So you’re really young to get this kind of promotion, right?” Tracy asked.

            Myka nodded. “One of the youngest in decades.”

            “I’m so proud of you, honey,” her mother said, squeezing her hand across the table. “And your father would be, too.”

            It was quiet for a moment, and Myka rubbed the back of her neck and said, “You think so?”

            “I know so,” her mother assured. “You saved that young man’s life, and you’re getting the recognition for it that you deserve. It’s obvious that you’ve found your calling.”

            “And what was it you always said?” Tracy added. “The Secret Service ensures the stability of the government and the integrity of elections by protecting the lives of elected officials, or something? That’s making the world a better place, Mykes, and that’s all he ever wanted from you.”

            “You’re right, it is,” Myka said, sitting up straighter.

            “So when will you leave? Do you know?” Tracy asked.

            Myka didn’t know, and the thought was a bit daunting. She hadn’t expected her life in Denver to end anytime soon. Her five-year plan had involved spending more time with her mother, being there for Tracy when her first child arrived, showing Kurt Smoller what he’d missed out on at her tenth high school reunion… and Helena. She’d imagined having time to figure out where Helena and Christina fit into her plans. It was hard to see them fitting well into a life that was suddenly being transplanted to Washington.

            Her mother and Tracy were carrying on in good spirits, and Myka did her best to keep up with them, but the complexities of reality had settled hard and cold in her stomach. Her quietness eventually caught Tracy’s attention, and she zeroed in on the issue right away.

            “What did Helena say about this?”

            “I haven’t told her,” Myka muttered. “Not yet.”

 

            She finally, reluctantly, made plans with Helena and Christina for the weekend, but until then, she avoided them. It was painful. Even though every thought about either of them ratcheted up Myka’s anxiety, being without them made her days too quiet, which was no less unsettling. Turning onto their street on Saturday was like jumping off a diving board—too late for the fear of heights, but still anticipating the inevitable pain of hitting water.

            She pulled up in time to see Nate hugging Helena before he and Adelaide drove away. And Helena didn’t like Nate, Myka knew she didn’t, but there was still envy in the pit of Myka’s stomach, because he was good with children, because his schedule was reliable and his office job was safe, because he would be in Denver still when Myka was gone. Whether in the next month or the next few years, Myka was always going to be gone, and Nate was always going to stay.

            She never should have come here, Myka realized. She was always going to leave and so she never should have come.

            “You must have had a long week,” Helena said when she saw Myka standing dazed on her front walk. “Come along, let’s get you fed.”

            Myka managed to eat less at dinner than Christina, who was too excited about describing the new book her uncle had sent her to bother with chewing food. Helena though, said nothing about it, even when the table was cleared and Christina was sitting next to the axolotls with her book in the other room. Helena rinsed their plates and piled them into the dishwasher, silent as a stone.

            “I needed to tell you something,” Myka said into the quiet of the kitchen.

            Helena dried her hands on a dishtowel and turned to Myka, saying, “I thought you might.”

            “I was offered a promotion, a position in Washington.”

            Helena spread the dishtowel on the edge of the sink to dry, smoothing it down more than needed.  
            “Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve worked hard to gain a position like that.”

            Something in Myka bristled at Helena’s staid response, and she snapped, “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

            “Is it?”

            “It’s a major step up in my career, of course it’s a good thing. Why would you ask that?”

            “Your father would be proud, wouldn’t he?” Helena said. Myka didn’t answer, but the way Helena looked at her, it felt like the truth was plain. “I don’t mean to denigrate your accomplishment, and your ambition is something I quite admire. I only mean that… I want to know that it’s what you want for yourself. Is it?”

            _I want you,_ Myka thought.

            The fact was, she wanted both, and she couldn’t have it. Helena deserved a partner who could be there for her, and Christina needed more stability than a long-distance relationship could provide. More than anything, Myka kept thinking of Helena’s terrified face on the night of the bust. This new job wouldn’t be outrageously dangerous really, but it would be more dangerous than the one she had, which meant Helena would be afraid again, maybe for a reason next time, and that wasn’t something Myka could stomach.

            And in any case, Helena wasn’t saying that she wanted Myka, just that she was curious about Myka’s motives.

            So she nodded. “Yeah. It’s really what I want.”

            Helena put her hand on Myka’s arm, but the look in her eyes wasn’t warm when she said, “I’m happy for you, then.”

 

            Tracy and her husband helped her pack. She’d called Helena, trying out the excuse of using her larger car, but Helena was always busy. Myka almost didn’t expect her to come to the airport to say goodbye—she’d said airports were difficult for Christina to handle—but she did.

            Christina was crying. She pressed herself against Myka’s side, and Myka clung to the kid as long as she could.

            “When will you come back?” Christina demanded.

            “I don’t know,” Myka said, as gently as she could. “Not for a while.”

            A good adult, she thought, would have something reassuring to say, but she couldn’t manage it. She just hugged the girl again before saying goodbye to her family. When she let go, Christina crumpled to the floor and started to melt down. Helena scooped her up, ignoring with ease all the people who were staring, and turned to Myka.

            “I’m sorry, we need to go.”

            “Of course,” Myka assured her. She wanted to reach out, but she wasn’t sure it was a good idea while there was a frantically wailing child in Helena’s arms. “I’ll call you from DC,” she said. “I promise.”

            Helena nodded and left.

            Myka did call, the second she landed in DC. Helena didn’t answer.

 

            When Dickinson had offered her this job, he hadn’t mentioned the absurd levels of incompetence he was trying to manage in his agents’ ranks. At first it was good, because Myka was stern and dogged, filled with purpose instead of wilting from her loneliness.

            On her first week, she caught two members of her team drinking while on duty, and she had to report it directly to Dickinson to get them sanctioned for it. Her team started sabotaging her equipment in minor but infuriating ways. Dickinson transferred her.

            Sam Martino was the lead agent on her new team. He was lonely, too, struggling to finalize his divorce despite being almost two thousand miles away from his estranged wife. They went out for drinks once, almost went home together, but it was never more than “almost.” It turned out Myka had just missed meeting him at the Denver field office, and she wondered for months if maybe they could have been reckless enough to be together back then. She stopped wondering when she was asked to manage museum security for the president himself.

            And then, finally, there was Pete. Silly, childish, competent Pete, who would bicker with her for hours and then eviscerate anyone who disrespected her authority, sometimes in the same breath. Between the two of them, they whipped a few younger agents into shape, and Dickinson was as proud as a fatherly boss was allowed to be. Not that it changed much overall. The computer system was still as old as she was, for one thing, and while she found his politics acceptable, the president as a person was kind of a dick. (His ex-wife, who Myka had met briefly, said she was considering running for president in the future, and god Myka was looking forward to that day.) To top it all off, after almost four years as partners, Pete was leaving. He was transferring to the field office in Philadelphia to marry the former assistant of a Senator who hadn’t gotten re-elected.

            “Can I offer you some advice?” Pete asked on one of their last days in the field together.

            “If you tell me to un-bunch my panties, I swear to god I will break your nose.”

            Pete laughed. “Nah, I just think you should take a break for a while, you know? Go home, see the new sights, hang out with your sister-slash-cousin. I mean, how many vacation days do you have racked up, anyway?”

            “Seventeen,” Myka muttered, then immediately defended herself. “But Tracy and Kevin are trying for another kid, so I’m gonna need those days to help them!”

            “Yeah, in nine months. You’ll have next year’s days to deal with that.”

            Myka groaned and glared at him. Pete put an arm around her shoulder.

            “Look, you trust me, right? I’ve got a good feeling about this! Go home.”

            She scheduled her flight out to be the same day as his, so they could spend an extra hour or so in the airport together and it would be easier not to cry.

 

            And now she’s here.

            She’s here, and Christina is turning to look at her, and the scene is inevitable. Helena had never called, never written. The Wells family had vanished from Myka’s life, and suddenly they’re here, and she doesn’t know why and she doesn’t know what happens now.

            When Christina sees her, she squeals and dashes forward, leaning against Myka’s side. Myka wraps her arms around her shoulders, which are higher up than before, and squeezes.

            “Hey you,” she says when Christina pulls away, brushing hair back from the twelve-year-old’s face to get a better look at her.

            Christina leans in conspiratorially, just like her mother used to, and whispers, “I knew Mummy hadn’t driven you away for good.”

            Myka looks over at Helena then and is surprised to see the hangdog look on her face. It occurs to Myka that she’d never thought to blame Helena for the disappearing act—she’d assumed that she just hadn’t been needed, or that she’d sacrificed the relationship of her own volition. Helena’s guilty look makes her realize that that wasn’t entirely true.

            _God,_ Myka thinks, as Helena looks away and starts fidgeting with her ring. _Why didn’t she just_ say something _?_

Then again, Myka hadn’t said anything, either.

In any case, she isn’t angry. She’s hopeful, somehow, and there’s a bit of that in Helena’s eyes, too, when she glances back at Myka.

            “Don’t let me interrupt,” Myka hears herself say. “I bought to-go, I was just looking at the art.”

            Helena doesn’t take the out. She slides a chair out from their table with her shoe and says something that might have made all the difference, before. That makes all the difference now.

            “Stay,” she says. “Please.”


End file.
